ABC News has admitted that it paid accused murderer Casey Anthony $200,000 in exchange for exclusive rights to video and photos. The network denies that the payments also included agreements for interviews.

The revelation came Thursday in an Orlando court hearing aimed at trying to determine if Anthony is broke and needs financial help to mount a defense.

The ABC News payments were made in August 2008 while Casey Anthony was under investigation but not yet charged with the first-degree murder of her toddler, Caylee Anthony. A grand jury indicted the mother in October 2008.

ABC stations have repeatedly aired the images and video but have not, until now, revealed the long-rumored financial arrangement behind them. Anthony’s lawyers told the judge about the ABC payment in a closed door hearing last fall. Thursday, the judge ordered the information be made public in open court.

I asked Kelly McBride, Poynter’s ethics group leader, what she thought of ABC’s payment. She responded via e-mail:

“It sounds to me like a pretty lucrative photo licensing deal. I don’t know how much [is typical] when they really have to license photos, but $200,000 is pretty expensive.

“I question all of these over-the-top licensing arrangements because you are essentially paying for a source to talk to you and you are going around the rules that say you are not allowed to do that.

“It gets so muddled because it’s just dishonest by nature to have these wink-wink nod-nod deals where we are saying we are licensing for the photos and not paying for her participation in the story. That is such a challenge to my sensibilities.”

I also asked my colleague Jill Geisler, Poynter’s leadership and management group leader and a long-time news director, for her input. She wrote:

“Checkbook journalism may score exclusives, which news organizations inevitably tout. Why then, do those news outlets routinely withhold information from readers and viewers about the financial deals behind the stories? Might detailed disclosures lead the public to question — even challenge — those arrangements? If leaders of traditional, tabloid or new media put dollars into the pockets of their sources, they should attach itemized receipts to their reports.”

“The news media’s duty is to report news, not help create it. The race to be first should not involve buying — directly or indirectly — interviews, an unseemly practice that raises questions of neutrality, integrity and credibility.”

“The New York Times scooped the competition with an exclusive interview with the Titanic wireless operator by forking over $1,000 for his story in 1912. Two decades later, the Hearst newspaper chain paid the legal bills of the defendant in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case to ensure scoops during the trial. In the 1960s, Life caused a minor flap among journalists when it paid the original Mercury astronauts for their stories.

“By the time Watergate rolled around, the television networks got involved. CBS News paid Nixon White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman for his story. Shortly after leaving office, both Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger signed million-dollar contracts with NBC to serve as exclusive “adviser-consultants” in news specials.

“Checkbook journalism flourished during the O.J. Simpson saga, with tabloid newspapers and TV shows writing the checks. Even minor players raked in cash for interviews. A National Enquirer editor went on “Larry King Live” with a $1 million check to make an unsuccessful public plea for Simpson friend Al Cowlings to tell his story of the infamous Bronco chase. “